A New Art Form May Arise From the 'Myst'

FOR THE TIME BEING I AM IGNORING THE alien pods, the racing cars, the intergalactic battles and the irradiated mutants. I have put aside the laser gun, the bombs, the Asian martial arts weapons, the requirement that I press buttons on a controller to pound a muscle-bound biker into a pulp.

Instead, I am standing in a garden, lulled by the sound of waves from the nearby ocean. The light is eerie, crisp and slightly unreal. Each surface has a polish and sheen that makes it seem untouched by human or natural forces. I am seemingly alone in a world in which ordinary objects are the magical products of an advanced technology. Yet in the midst of this pastoral paradise, there are also archaic machines with gears and levers that thump and grind, and giant pre-electronic switches. There is a mixture of the pre-modern and the post-modern, a sense of surreal antiquity recalling early science fiction. I have entered the world of "Myst."

"Myst" is a video game played on a CD-ROM, a computer-constructed world through which the player moves, touching objects, following cryptic instructions, trying to unravel the mysteries of an alternate universe. It is so unusual a game it has already inspired an epic number of beard-pulling commentaries about its significance; Wired magazine, the bible of the new technology, even thinks that it has defined a new art form. But that milestone is still a ways off. For all its high-tech sophistication, "Myst" can often seem to be a sequence of sluggishly shifting stills and convoluted puzzles.

Its reflective, almost cool esthetic, though, gives a hint of what may eventually be possible as the technology improves: a game that weaves together image, sound and narrative into a new form of experience. The game has sold more than a half million copies this year, with many more expected for the holidays, and it is becoming a landmark in a game industry whose fortunes have had as many ups and downs as an amusement park ride.

The video-game industry is now comparable to the movie industry in size and scope, with around $5 billion a year in income, and it is sometimes difficult to see the boundaries between games and films: games are made from movies; movies are made about games; games imitate movies; movies' special effects imitate games. The best game companies now use set designers, directors and actors, often directly from Hollywood. Some of the most sophisticated games have elaborate musical scores, carefully constructed scripts and story lines, imitations of camera movements -- not to mention credits that scroll up the screen listing everyone but virtual stunt men.

With this mixture of high and low, imagination and hype, the video-game world often has the atmosphere of an open-air market, with frantic calls by vendors to come examine their goods. The hype has become more frenzied because home video-game systems (as opposed to their computer siblings) have entered a slump as consumers wait for the next generation of game machines.

And there are the games themselves, battle games and strategy games, role-playing games and adventure games, simulation games and sports games. Some seem to have been put together by formula. They scream out their action-packed promises with misleading cartoon images, comic-book in-your-face heroes that are so superior to the indistinct screen images, the industry seems to have taken its lead from the backs of old cereal boxes. Some -- including the most successful -- are ridiculously vulgar, relishing images of spurting blood and decapitated bodies.

Others are intellectually challenging. I have sat at a computer screen surrounded by adults and preadolescent children, all of us shouting proposals to help Indiana Jones find his way out of a maze. I have discussed the premises of a city-building simulation game with urban planners. I have played the classic Nintendo Mario games for hours, marveling at their inventiveness until my maturity had come into question.

It is difficult to make sense of the variety in this young form of entertainment. In the world of video games, as in the world of "Myst," the most primitive and the most technologically advanced objects often appear side by side. The gaming universe seems guided by three major influences, each creating a particular style of game: the arcade, the home and the movie theater. In each video game, whether played at an arcade or in the home, some elements of these genres come into play; each locale has left its mark on video-game culture. The Arcade Put Another Nickel . . . Uh, $1

The arcade is where games first seduced players, back in the pre video era when pinball was king. But with the large-scale arrival of video games in the early 80's, the arcade came into its own, offering a world of shadow and darkness: crowds gather around ominous-looking booths, peering at seemingly illicit images.

You squeeze past the crowds, past screens with screaming mutant wrestlers, past steering wheels being spun in front of rushing roads, to the sound of screeching tires, past target games, in which elaborate weapons are pointed at pop-up creatures. The sound effects and music are deliberately grating, meant to keep the player on edge; the images owe much to comic books and carnival art. If arcade games have an esthetic, it is focused on the creation of a particular kind of sexual atmosphere, tinged with anxiety; it seems to draw adolescent boys to the arcades, tapping the same impulses that once drew audiences to circus freak shows.

The arcade game is one of sudden moves and quick death. The most successful games promise mastery over that world but also guarantee failure; every player is doomed to die, and there are not enough quarters in the world to allow time to survive. Companies have staked their fortunes on the hope that players will return again and again to the scene of their deaths.

The first home video games tapped into the craze for arcades. Every game system, from Nintendo to 3DO, has its arcade-style games, tries to reproduce the spirit of that darkened room on low-definition monitors and sluggish PC's. The attempts have grown more sophisticated along with the technology. Racing-car games are more three-dimensional, and the view more internal to the car: you are there. On Super Nintendo systems, a special chip that allows quick graphics processing is used to make the game "Stunt Race" more involving, sacrificing realism of surface for the realism of movement. Sega boasts that two games for its new 32X system are identical to the arcade versions.

Every such game has a setup: you are a young pilot, a seasoned racer, an international spy; there is an invasion, an abduction, a contest, a war. Using the buttons on the controller, you must save the world or at least assert your pride. Companies have devised arcade-style accessories that replace the hand-held controller with light guns, a helmet that shoots on the word "fire," a pad with sensors the crazed player is supposed to jog on.

But the screen is the center of action and here the idea is to make the edge-of-death experience plausible, even when the image is rudimentary. The genius of a game like Tetris is that the pressure comes purely from abstract, geometric maneuvering, a race against the implacable randomness swamping the screen. Other arcade games are less subtle. Their goal is to finely focus anxiety, making it seem that there are high stakes involved. The less a game trusts its own imagination to create a game-world, the more it relies on the latest technology for creating "realistic" effects, and the more it has to make "death" seem like death, and display gore.

One recent arcade game for 3DO, "Shock Wave," makes an ersatz realism work despite a game concept that is almost a genre itself: you are a rookie pilot, shooting down aliens. It uses live actors and dialogue to punctuate the shooting game. 3DO's technology allows a feeling of space and time in realistic landscapes. This is a game I have sweated through -- at least until I was shot down. "Shock Wave" is all the more ominous because it omits the usual bad-rock soundtrack. There is just the drone of the plane's engines and the thumps of alien fire. The Home Where the Heart Pounds Faster

The biggest achievement of Nintendo and now Sega, the two reigning giants of the video-game industry, has been to transcend the arcade. Anxiety and death and danger are still there, quick reflexes are still needed, but the atmosphere is different. Each system has developed unusual games that seem to inspire communal participation; the player is not shut off in an interior world of sensation and threat but is part of a group. Observers shout out suggestions, and veterans offer help through difficult parts. These games might never have been developed without the home in mind.

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Like arcade games, they have various levels of play, but here the different levels reveal radically different worlds and different ways of maneuvering; one level might be underwater and another in midair on platforms. The brilliance of Nintendo's Mario Brothers games -- in which a mustachioed plumber is ostensibly out to rescue a princess -- is that everything is serious but everything is also amusing; there is a wry wit at work as waddling turtles become forces to be reckoned with and Mario sprouts wings and flies.

The Mario games, all developed by Sigeru Miyamoto of Japan, practically define the character of the home video game. There is a world to explore and secrets hidden throughout: ways to restore life, earn magic powers, escape a deadly opponent. Magazines publish maps, hints and codes that open up hidden regions that only masters of these strange universes c b; companies staff phones with "game counselors" to help those who can't find their way out.

Nintendo has not been able to find a character or a style to match the Mario series, and its last major entry, "Super Mario World," a few years ago was just a variation on a theme. The company is now mounting an aggressive marketing campaign for its new "Donkey Kong Country" game, which keeps the old formula intact but uses striking three-dimensional graphics for its leading ape.

Though Sega has had a disappointing year (its profits in the six months ending in September were down 47 percent over the same period the preceding year versus Nintendo, whose profits were down 16 percent), it has mounted an effective challenge to the once imperial Nintendo, partly because it has developed a different style in its Sonic the Hedgehog series, which Sega describes as a $1 billion franchise. Sega's latest technology will allow a new character, Knuckles, to be planted back in old Sonic games, seeming to violate the boundaries that govern game cartridges.

There are new entries in this home format, notably "Ecco: The Tides of Time" and "Earthworm Jim" -- and there is much to admire in the animation and spirit of these games. But the home video game is now formulaic. The character generally moves from left to right, jumps when you hit one button, kicks or throws objects when you hit another and might use some esoteric power when you punch a third one. There are still things that can be done with the Mario model, and recent blockbusters from Nintendo and Sega do their best, but players have started to lose interest as overall sales statistics prove. Unless companies can create games that match the Mario games with intelligence and wit, the game wars between rival manufacturers will hinge solely on technology.

One innovation in home-style video games has been with a 3DO game called "Twisted," which is really a board game for television. It has a punky, irreverent emcee offering prizes and black-and-white panning shots of a cheering 1950's audience. Each player solves puzzles on screen, accompanied by game-show antics. It is a put-on and a bit wearing, but it gives one example of how new technologies might eventually lead to unusual variations on tired themes. The Movies All That Glitters Is Not Popcorn

All games aspire to tell a story. If challenges are posed, they have to be posed in a context, as part of a journey from one point to another. There are game genres that offer carefully defined journeys: sports simulations and role-playing games. There are also simulations in which you learn how to fly a fighter plane or, in Microsoft's recently released, beautifully designed "Space Simulator," a space shuttle. Sophisticated simulation games by Maxis ("Simcity," "Simearth" and "Simlife") place the player at the heart of an even grander narrative, one that is unique, being constructed during the act of play. In "Simearth," the player is God making His own planet.

When the personal computer first became common in the early 1980's, some adventure games aspired to the condition of novels. Developed by a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology students turned entrepreneurs, these games, most notably a fantasy called "Zork," worked entirely using textual descriptions and simple commands. A paragraph would describe a location and you would respond by saying "go north" or "open mailbox" and the computer would take you north or describe your junk mail.

Then came color video and the narrative changed. Sierra On-Line has just released its six-game King's Quest series on two CD-ROM's. The earliest game, from 1983, has coloring book graphics and a space for typing in commands. The fourth game, in 1988, had a film-style soundtrack and was advertised: "Can a computer game make you cry?" The last game eliminated text completely.

Now the goal is not the novel but the movie. A recent CD-ROM game, "Return to Zork," begins with the antique typed-out text from "Zork." The black screen gradually fades into a color image, the text disappears, and the "camera" does some fancy turns. Then the player seems to be flying over cliffs and mountains, accompanied by a soaring synthesizer score and movie-style credits.

As it turns out, "Return to Zork" is a bit of a bore aside from the visual effects. The technology overwhelmed the idea. Many other efforts at cinematic realism are also stilted. One game for Sega CD, "Sewer Shark," shows an actor screaming insults at the player as if he were part of some cyberpunk thriller.

In the newly released version of "Demolition Man" for 3DO, each level contains footage of Sylvester Stallone from the movie before descending into shoot-'em-up action from Stallone's perspective. These are primitive attempts to hook conventional games to popular movie symbols. But there are also new companies like Rocket Science, which is drawing its inspiration and personnel from the movie business and trying to create games that have not just the look of a film but the feel of one.

One successful example is "Loom," a game for the PC that was developed, not coincidentally, by one of George Lucas's companies; the actions depend upon spells cast by arranging musical notes. Play the notes in the right order and a whirlpool may stop spinning or something invisible become visible. Play them in reverse and the magic is inverted. Words aren't needed; this is a beautifully detailed universe.

More recently, Sierra's CD-ROM game "Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers" may have stilted procedures, but the music, the spoken dialogue and the images of New Orleans bring it to the brink of cinema. Its lead character's voice is provided by Tim Curry, who has also appeared in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" and "The Three Musketeers." Another recent game, "Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller," features the voices of Dennis Hopper and Grace Jones.

The goal is to transport the player into a virtual theater. These new games offer glimpses of what is to come. That is the main point of "The Seventh Guest," in which a haunted house is host to a series of brain teasers. The puzzles are often ancillary to the plot but there seems to be a director at work, building tension, determining where the camera is placed, scoring sound effects and musical themes.

And of course, there is "Myst," which, in its combination of surreal futurism and old-fashioned imagery, seems to move beyond cinema. Its pace and intentions are different. "Myst" seems to define a new genre in which the film does not exist without the player who brings it to life. "Myst" seems to reflect the condition of the video game itself, poised at the brink of something new even before it has finished mastering something old.

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A version of this article appears in print on December 4, 1994, on Page 2002001 of the National edition with the headline: A New Art Form May Arise From the 'Myst'. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe